DIARY OF A HOUSE SALE - in a "static" house price part of the country

Contessa

lessonlearned wrote: »

Shall be watching your thread with interest Money and Contessa's contributions too.

Definitely second the advice to scrutinise the details thoroughly - the standard of English these days......:rotfl:

My original details when sent to me had the words "spacious and well maintained" three times in one sentance. When I suggested they use a thesaurus they didn't know what one was - as for punctuation.....

I ended up re-writing the damn thing myself. And having to call them back to redo some of the photographs. But then I freely admit I can be a bit of a control freak.

Good luck to you both, here's :beer: - to you. Should be champers for all your hard work and getting this far.

Fingers crossed for a good offer and a speedy and safe passage through to exchange and completion.

Thank you for your encouragement!
I remember seeing this typo in a description ".......views of All Stains Church"

moneyistooshorttomention

Ditto - thanks for the encouragement lessonlearned - and...ahem...apologies for going a bit over the top a bit back..

Absolutely googler - so I am getting the estate agent doing the viewings - as you say. I'll be perfectly happy to meet the buyer (all being well re price paid of course:cool:;)) after exchange of contracts time and (ditto above:cool:;)) even make them a cup of coffee if they come round to measure up.

Time to get on for the day then - in this house that's apparently turned "spacious" overnight - having duly checked that it is in fact a good bit bigger than most other 2-beds as they say and 100 square feet more than one I've been watching up for sale nearby and feeling a bit panicky about the price they are charging for theirs - so that makes mine a higher price than theirs in 3 ways (the more desirable part of this little area than theirs is/bigger/better condition).

At least re that size - I've now learnt that just as no photo of the bathroom means it's a coloured suite, that no overall house size could mean that it's pokey (aka compact and bijou). You know you are getting older when you flaunt your house's vital statistics rather than your own LOL...

lessonlearned

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Ditto - thanks for the encouragement lessonlearned - and...ahem...apologies for going a bit over the top a bit back..


At least re that size - I've now learnt that just as no photo of the bathroom means it's a coloured suite, that no overall house size could mean that it's pokey (aka compact and bijou). You know you are getting older when you flaunt your house's vital statistics rather than your own LOL...

Apology accepted - with good grace. :rotfl::rotfl:

I'm sure that you must have felt quite "got at" at times. It's just that - I think I speak for most of us - we didn't want to see you make expensive mistakes.

For the unaware and unprepared the property game has become something of a minefield - far more complicated than say 20 years ago. The stakes are high and mistakes can be costly.

Depersonalising your house and preparing it for sale is never easy. Your personal space is just that and no one really likes it being invaded. This is why my advice is always to just try and take out the emotions and treat it just like any other business deal.

Then - you can get on with that sale and get on with your life. You can get all personal with your new home and live exactly how you please.

Definitely flaunt size. This is one occasion when size really does matter.;)

Work out your square footage and that of your average competitor. It will make you feel good to know, then if ever it comes down to "Oh but there's a house the same as yours and it's £X cheaper", then you will have a good statistic you can chuck into the negotiations.

PS just added. Also take the time to work out the price per square foot.

I know it's your EA doing the face to face stuff but even so it's a good tactic, especially if your EA is trying to get you to accept an offer you are not happy with. The EA can then go back to the purchaser and quote those facts. (The average EA does not normally have those statistics in their head).

Looking forward to seeing you progress this.

moneyistooshorttomention

Thanks.

I think maybe I might "flaunt" another statistic as well - my fuel bill. I have told the estate agent that I think £55 per month for both gas and electric (by someone who doesnt ration their use either) is probably pretty darn good as a fuel bill compared to a lot of houses - so a casual comment chucking that fact in by the agent on viewings might not go amiss..:rotfl:

Think I might get my calculator out now and divide up mine (and other houses) square footage for that calculation - wishes all houses would give their size, as I'm blowed if I can work that out myself. The best I was able to do on trying to work my own out before the agent came in with their pointer gadget they use for that was to add up the room sizes and try and guesstimate for main areas and I came to the wrong figure.

Now wondering if I've got all relevant "bits of paper" assembled that my solicitor will need on sale. In box file to date:
- guarantees for all the upvc-ing work (not just windows)
- guarantees for roof replacement
- certificates for rewiring when I bought the house and subsequent electrical work done
- radon test letter (1995 - well I've always regarded this house as a starter house that I would move on from as soon as I had the chance...)
- boiler replacement and testing paperwork

Is that the lot? Anything else I need to add to my box file for solicitor?

EDIT: The solicitor has the deeds anyway and I've got a Land Registry thing (courtesy of re-mortgaging when all those offers to do so were around some years back) with ancient deed bits - as I used them before and will be quite happily using them again - as they are super-efficient.

lessonlearned

Fuel bills sound good. A well insulated property is definitely a plus.

Re the Sol box - sounds about right.

it should contain all guarantees and certificates for anything that has been done.

So ......
Gas safety certs for boiler and any gas fires, electrical wiring,
Fensa Guarantees for windows
Any building regs or planning permissions for structural alterations
Guarantees (if still applicable) for any appliances you are leaving
Anything that can prove your property has been well maintained, ie receipts and invoices for any bits and pieces.
Instruction manuals and service record document for boiler.

Your radon letter is definitely pertinent.

Now I know this has nothing to do with the sale but I also make up another one for my purchasers. I photocopy all of the above. I told you I'm a bit of an OCD control freak.:rotfl::rotfl:

Basically I don't trust EA's and Sols not to lose valuable documents.

For the purchasers file I also add instruction manuals for cooker and any appliances. A list of useful telephone numbers, drs, dentists, details of local amenities, a bit of tourist info, where the half decent cafes, restaurants and take-a-ways are, the numbers of decent trades people, where they can find the stopcock etc.

I also leave a polite note asking them to forward any mail that slips through the net. Don't forget to instruct Royal Mail. It's just cost me £47 for a year to have my mail redirected.

moneyistooshorttomention

Yikes...lots of photocopying coming up then:eek:

I like to be well in control of anything major involving me. I seem to recall I had a little mental list of "what should happen when" when I bought this house as regards what I expected the solicitor to do and when to keep a check on things. They exceeded my expectations in the event and I didn't have to contact them once to nag at them. But there's always a first and I..errrm....have a lot of experience of seeing things lost at work...:cool:

List of instruction manuals, telephone numbers, etc for purchaser - errrmm....think I might take up DaveNave's suggestion on that one along the lines of good purchaser=everything like this left and bad purchaser=somehow it all got lost.:rotfl:

Contessa

Ooh, Money, you're becoming quite an exhibitionist with all your flaunting!;)

phoebe1989seb

Definitely agree with what Lesson said re: square footage - it always cheeses me right off when there's no total for square footage included in house particulars and I'd also prefer it if estate agents included info such as price per square foot too.

The last three houses we've sold (2007, 2011 & 2012 - in different parts of the country but using a small independent EA each time) sent round an independent guy to prepare the floor plan and total square footage for each floor was included in the house details, but so many EAs still seem to not bother with floor plans I personally find this very off-putting to the extent that unless the pics themselves are very appealling or the house has some particularly interesting feature/large size that is obvious from the info that is provided, I'd probably not investigate much further......but price per sq ft would be an added bonus as a tool for comparing one house with another!

Good luck Money & Contessa - hope you have selling success without too much hassle

moneyistooshorttomention

Contessa wrote: »

Ooh, Money, you're becoming quite an exhibitionist with all your flaunting!;)

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Have just had email of brochure back. No typing errors whatsoever:D

Have sent email back with various amendments I wish to make though. Most notably:

- I want a photo of the back yard (aka courtyard garden) done from a different angle. Theirs shows the "good" stuff, but also a "bad" point. A different angle and its gone in a puff of smoke.

- The floorplan shows correct square metres, but somehow 90 square feet or so knocked off the square footage figure. I had the EPC man translate that number of sq. metres into sq. feet fortunately - but I doubt the average viewer would try and translate and realise that a rooms worth of space had gone missing. So - I've asked for those figures to be the correct ones.


- No mention was made of my loft having been converted into a storage room by me (good of itself and also gives an indication that its a possible loft conversion into a 3rd bedroom). Asked for that to be put in.

One or two other, more minor, points made. I've asked the estate agent to substitute a photo of backyard from better angle from the ones she took and, if necessary, come out again and take a better one. Fortunately, I've never seen any of those "narrow" photos in details of other houses with this agent that a lot of other estate agents have replacing one or two of the standard size photos (and then realise that there has been a photo change and the narrow ones are presumably taken on a mobile phone instead). I know they don't all do replacement photos in a cheapskate type way - as a house I have been following in chosen location highly amused me because I realised the cooker had gone walkabout from the kitchen photo only because I had seen the previous one (with that house having been on the market so long).

hazyjo

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

- No mention was made of my loft having been converted into a storage room by me (good of itself and also gives an indication that its a possible loft conversion into a 3rd bedroom). Asked for that to be put in.

All they can say is 'boarded loft space'. It's not been 'converted' into anything, it's exactly as it was, but, presumably, boarded. It might provide 'room for storage', but it's not a storage 'room'.

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

...as a house I have been following in chosen location highly amused me because I realised the cooker had gone walkabout from the kitchen photo only because I had seen the previous one (with that house having been on the market so long).

Not sure what you mean - was the oven previously in the kitchen photo, then it disappeared? If it was freestanding/slotted in and not built in, it was probably never included in the sale in the first place. Maybe they sold it separately, or maybe they took it elsewhere...

Jx